


Slow healing

by littlemissambitious



Category: The Daevabad Trilogy - S. A. Chakraborty
Genre: F/M, I created an alternate epilogue set 10 years in the future, I hope you like it!, My First Fanfic, Nahri & Ali's story just didn't seem finished to me, Original Character(s), Post Book 3: The Empire of Gold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:47:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26180632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlemissambitious/pseuds/littlemissambitious
Summary: The story is set 10 years after the events of the third book, Empire of Gold. When reading the epilogue, I just felt like Nahri & Ali's story was not finished and that there were some open questions I would love to see an answer on. Because the story to come was so clear to me, I decided to write an additional/alternate epilogue based on what I thought they would go through next.The story may contain spoilers so I'd suggest not continuing if you haven't finished EOG yet.
Relationships: Nahri e-Nahid/Alizayd al Qahtani
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24





	Slow healing

**Author's Note:**

> This is my very first fanfic - ever - so I hope you like it!  
> 

It had been a decade since the war ended. A decade of slowly rebuilding Daevabad. Forming a government. Building a normal life in the house that was now hers in the shafit district. The hospital was thriving, new students coming in each year from all over the world. Daeva, djinn and shafit. Just like she had imagined. The dream that she had tried so hard to bury because she never expected it to become reality. Even after all this time, she feared sometimes that it wasn’t real. That she would lose it somehow.

The sound of children shrieking interrupted her thoughts. Looking up from the bench she was seated on in the palace gardens, she couldn’t help but smile at the sight in front of her. Ali had taken it upon himself to teach some of the children in the palace to swim. No djinn children, of course. The djinn were still wary of water, even as they got used to seeing Ali and his obvious marid influence around Daevabad. The shafit children loved it, though.

Laying down the herbs she was sorting in the baskets around her, she gazed happily at the sight before her. The children had apparently given up on learning how to swim, now splashing each other with water. The source of their shrieks, though, were the small shapes of fish and merpeople now surrounding them. Created by the teacher in their midst who seemed to have realised that he lost his students’ attention and decided to give them some new entertainment.

As if he could feel her eyes on him, Ali looked up. He was smiling from ear to ear. Obviously delighted by the excitement of the children around him. She couldn’t help but grin back. She loved seeing him this happy. She still remembered how he had feared the rebuke of his kin, of their people. The children’s obvious delight of his powers made it easier for him to bear.

Fearing that they were losing their teacher’s attention, one of the children tugged on his arm, motioning him to make even more of his watery creatures. Ali rolled his eyes at her before he happily obliged.

Nahri looked down at the herbs she had been sorting. Seeing him like this took her back to the early days. When he was so worried that people would fear him for his powers. That she would be repelled by how he now looked.

It had been a warm summer day in Daevabad and they were sitting in her small courtyard. It was, perhaps, a year after their victory. While they had spent a lot of time together, neither of them had dared take their friendship a step further, not wanting to take the next step before the other was ready.

They had spent the day at the hospital, she looking at patients who were recovering from all sorts of injuries and diseases, and he looking into the books as he had promised her.  
Her grandfather had stopped by the house afterwards with a basket of some of her favourite Egyptian food and Ali had stayed for dinner, helping her clean up after the meal. They were now enjoying the mild evening breeze as they were sitting in her courtyard across from each other.

“Can you believe it’s already been a year?”, she asked him. “It seems so long ago and yet so close at the same time.”

He nodded his agreement. “I feel like we have barely begun rebuilding,” he replied.

“At least the government is finally taking shape,” she added with a sigh.

He snorted.

“With some small nudging on your end,” he grinned mischievously, “or they’d still have been bickering about who should or shouldn’t be included.”

“Yes, well,” she grinned back at him, “they needed a reminder of who exactly they owe their freedom to.”

Remembering the discussions of the past few months, she sighed. She knew that some of the Daevas blamed her for their loss of power. How they had hoped to stay in power under Manizheh’s rule when she had killed so many of them was beyond her grasp, but she knew some resented her for the role she had played in Manizheh’s demise. On top of that, her plan to include the shafit and, through Ali, the marid in their government had been met with protests from all the djinn tribes. In the end, the tribes had conceded, but Nahri couldn’t help shake the feeling that they had conceded because of who they were. A Qahtani of the family they had served for centuries and a descendant of Anahid who had founded their city and ruled it for even longer than the Qahtanis had.

“Was it wrong to force the vote?”, she asked Ali hesitantly.

He shrugged, a pensive look on his face as he gathered his thoughts.

“We both know they weren’t ready,” he replied softly. “But it needed to be done. We need the shafit on our side and they deserve a seat in the government just as much as the other tribes.”

“I know,” she breathed and she couldn’t help but sigh again. “I had hoped that the war would have helped them realise just how similar we all are.”

She looked at her hands, folded in her lap, trying to find the words to explain how she felt.

“I just…”, she started. “It feels like we could reach out and take control in a heartbeat, and they wouldn’t even protest. It’s almost like they want us to be in control. To go back to the natural order of things where they can look to us for guidance and they won’t have to think for themselves. And, after the last session, I am afraid that that is exactly what we are doing.” She looked up, catching Ali’s gaze and holding it while her eyes started watering. “I feel like we are still in control, forcing our way of thinking upon them all while calling it equality. It feels wrong, but I didn’t see another way. The vote was just too important.”

He slipped out of his chair and knelt before her, taking her hands in his and resting them both in her lap while his eyes were still on hers.

“It takes time, my dear friend,” he squeezed her hands gently. “You can’t expect them to alter their beliefs in a few months. The kind of change we want to create will take years, decades even. I know we are not where we want to be, but the fact that it makes you wonder our place in all this, the fact that you question our power, it shows that we will be different. We just need to make sure we stay aware.”

“Besides,” he smiled at her gently, “who can blame them for wanting to follow the advice of a Nahid who flew to Daevabad on a shedu to save them all?”

She couldn’t help but give him a slight smile back at that.

“Or the marid descendant who brought an army through the currents on ships that should have sunk a long time ago while leading his distant kin in battle for the first time in remembrance,” she shot back.

He chuckled before he looked down at their joined hands. His eyes became darker as he looked down, though. His next question so quiet she almost didn’t hear him.

“Does it bother you?” he whispered. “How different it made me?”

Her heart broke a little at his question. So fearful of her response that he couldn’t even look at her. She reached out to turn his face towards her again.

“No,” she said fiercely, looking him in the eye so he could see the truth of her words. “Oh Ali, how could you even think that? You are still the same person you always were.”

She took her right hand out of his and laid it on his chest, right above his heart, ignoring the small thrill it gave her so she could focus on what she wanted to say. The words he needed to hear. Even though it terrified her to speak them out loud.

“I asked you to come back to me, and you did. That is all that matters. No matter what they changed about you, they haven’t changed the person you are deep inside. You are still the most caring, generous, honest person I know.”

She swallowed. It didn’t feel right to see him kneeling before her, especially with what she was trying to tell him, so she slid off the bench until she was sitting right in front of him, knee to knee. His eyes were still locked on her, beseeching and slightly lost.

“Ali, my dearest friend, you are the only one who truly understands me. Your love for the shafit and your drive to change their future for the better, your courage to give up the powers that have defined you for so long in order to save our people, your drive to do things better this time. How could I not love that about you?”

She gave him a shy smile as she saw the hope rise in his eyes.

“Did you know that your mother once painted a picture of how our lives could be? She told me to divorce Munthadir, marry you and build a kingdom in Ta Ntry while we slowly built a rebellion to take on Manizheh. A peaceful life in Ta Ntry with you by my side. At the time, it scared me to death because, deep down, I knew how much I wanted it. It didn’t feel fair to our people in Daevabad, though, and I knew we couldn’t delay that long. But I wanted it.”

She took a deep breath and shared the most sacred truth of all, the one she held so close to her.

“It scared me because, all my life, what I wanted has been taken away from me. So I never dared dream about the future. Even now, now that we have peace, it scares me to tell you this. But I want you to know that this life we have now, together, it’s everything I ever wanted. And I wouldn’t want to share it with anyone else.”

The look he gave her told her everything she needed to know. Hope blossomed in his eyes, hope for a better future. Together.

“It’s everything I ever wanted too,” he admitting in a shy voice. “I know it’s not perfect, I know we have so much work ahead of us, but it’s the future I never thought I would be lucky enough to have.”

* * *

Lost in her memories, she didn’t notice Ali had snuck up on her until he showered her with water dripping from his hair as he leaned over her.

“Daydreaming?”, he chuckled.

“Remembering.”

When she didn’t elaborate, he shrugged and sat down on the bench next to her.

The children seemed to have left the garden, leaving them alone in a small alcove next to the river. Ali looked content. She knew how much he loved being in the water. And being around the children.

They were orphans, all of them orphaned during the war. Some had been babies at the time. Without a better place to house them, Ali had helped her to create an orphanage in one of the palace wings. He had found an old shafit woman to run it, an old acquaintance of his, and they had hired tutors to teach the children everything from language to mathematics to history until they were old enough to head out on their own. Even with the help of so many people, though, they both felt responsible for the children and they spent most of their free time with them. Playing games, telling them bedtime stories, nursing them when they fell sick.

They always joked that they didn’t need children of their own with so many children to take care off. But, even though she loved them all dearly and she spent as much time with them as she could, none of them shared their home. Seeing him so happy, it made her wonder if he might want to have a child of his own.

It’s not like they hadn’t considered adoption. But the orphanage housed dozens of children and it didn’t seem fair to adopt only a few of them. So, instead, they had devoted their time to all of them.  
She was clearly not the only one thinking along these lines today.

“Are you still taking your tonic to prevent pregnancy?” Ali suddenly blurted out, blushing slightly. Even after all this time, speaking openly about topics like this always made him feel uncomfortable.

“Yes,” she replied. “I wouldn’t stop taking it without discussing it with you first.”

He nodded, lost in thought.

She had continued taking the tonic when she became intimate with Ali to ease both their minds, neither of them ready to start a family of their own when the wounds of the war were still so fresh. She still had nightmares of Manizheh chasing her mother and her across the world, not resting before she had caught them both. She had been in no hurry to open herself up to that amount of vulnerability. It had taken them two years to slowly build their relationship to the point where they decided to get married. Or rather, to the point where she had been ready to become intimate and he had informed her that he wanted to be married first. Not that she had been surprised.

“Why?”, she couldn’t help but adding.

For once, he seemed unsure of how to respond. Trying to be patient, she waited until he had gathered his thoughts.

“I know we haven’t talked about it much but the children at the palace are getting older. Sooner or later, the last ones will be ready to leave. I know we held off on having children of our own, and I am still glad of our decision, but I can’t help but wonder if you even want to have children.”

“Of course,” she started but he threw up his hands to halt my response.

“Are you sure you want to have children with me?”, he said earnestly, his voice breaking slightly on the next sentence. “Children who could look like me.”

Thinking about their conversation so many years ago, she couldn’t help but feel her heart aching for him again. She knew why he asked, though. Many might find it repulsive to have a child with someone who had such an obvious marid appearance. She knew that he needed to hear how she felt about it.

“Ali, my love,” she smiled at him. “I am able to love all the palace children, no matter if they are djinn, Daeva or shafit. Even though they are not ours. I would feel blessed if our children take after you, no matter what they would look like. You must know by now that I don’t judge someone by their appearance. And a child that I would share with you, it would be beautiful to me no matter what.”

She could see some doubt still simmering in his eyes.

“I think the main question is, whether _you_ would be okay if they look like you,” she added.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I want to say that I wouldn’t mind but I can’t help but think that it will make life harder for them. They will be so different from anyone else. And, yet, I hope that some will inherit my powers. I love water, I always have. It was a way for me to feel close to my kin in Ta Ntry. And I could teach them to work the currents so we would have a future ambassador for the marid after we are gone.”

She wanted to console him but his words installed a new anguish in her heart.

“Ali,” her throat felt suddenly constricted, “what if they have all our combined powers? Marid, djinn and Nahid? They would be more powerful than any other living being in our world and even we have no way of knowing how their powers would manifest. Wouldn’t some consider it a threat?”

“I hadn’t thought about that yet,” he mused. “Then again, it would take years for such powers to manifest. I guess we will need to figure that out as we go along. We can protect them as long as needed, and we have enough allies who would help us keep them safe. Let’s not worry about that until it’s an actual threat.”

“Okay,” she conceded. “Then let’s not worry about their appearance either.”

She thought about it for a second and added, “For what it’s worth, I don’t believe our children will look marid. After all, it took one of the greatest and oldest marid in the world to change your appearance. I think we’ll have enough trouble to see what their Geziri, Ayaanle, Nahid and shafit heritage will look like.”

He laughed at that.

“You’re probably right,” he said, still smiling.

They sat in companionable silence for a while. She was looking at the river, watching the sunlight play across the surface. She had always thought the reflection of the light on the water looked like magic. It made her feel calm and grounded.

“Well, my love,” Ali continued at last, “we don’t have to decide right now. We still have a few years before the last children leave the palace. Let’s not worry ourselves overmuch until then.”

Knowing he spoke true, she relaxed and leaned towards him, nestling herself at his side. She felt his arm wrap around her as he pulled her close. Side by side, they sat on the bench overlooking the river, snug in their little alcove. They had faced worse odds and they still lived. As long as they were together, she knew they could face it. There, overlooking the river where she had first come across him swimming such a long time ago, she felt a peace settle over them. And she knew that, whatever came next, she was ready for it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading my first fanfic! I hope you liked it.
> 
> I've been thinking of continuing this fanfic with additional chapters on Dara's travels and on Zaynab and Aqisa so if you'd like to read more, let me know.


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